


I Wish I Was The Moon

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey’s Anatomy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 17:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10926738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: AU:It’s been five years, she thinks. Or at least, close enough to… So much is different. But the walls, they make her feel exactly the same.





	I Wish I Was The Moon

She stutters her way through the once-imposing glass doors like a ghost. If there is anyone who recognises her, then they don’t speak up. Her eyes fixed fiercely on her fingers, wrapped, white knuckle tight, around the strap of her handbag. She walks towards the stairs with the authority of someone who knows exactly where she’s going; forces back the tentative hesitancy of a little girl, lost.

It’s been five years, she thinks. Or at least, close enough to… So much is different. But the walls, they make her feel exactly the same.

She heads to the tunnels because she’s early and she’s terrified and she just needs a moment to _be_. She can think of no-where else to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She passes a pair of scrubs clad surgeons on the stairs. Their fresh-faced enthusiasm as they bound past her screams _interns_ , and she prays for a beat that she wasn’t so obvious, back in the day. She grins, lets memories she keeps locked up tight swell inside her suddenly. Who is she kidding, after all?

There are gurneys lining the walls, just like old times. And it’s seconds, minutes, before she can bring herself to sit. She can hear a chorus of familiar voices that she knows can’t be real. Laughter and mocking and sarcasm and exhaustion. A heady mixture of loud and soft that presses against her chest. Tight. Closes her eyes against the dust motes dancing in the shaft of light that splits the wall opposite.

She hears footsteps that deepen and then fade away again. Coming no closer than the intersection at the end of the hallway. She can’t decide whether she wants to be discovered or not. Dreads the thought with just as much fervour as she desires it to come true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Portland has been good to her, she contemplates. The anonymity that came with settling in a new city, a welcome reprieve. The trip to Seattle had been unsettling for the first few miles. Her eyes on the rear-view mirror, the comfortable landscape of all that she’d built in the aftermath. The knowledge, heavy, that she’s not confident she’ll find the strength to go back there.

_The state line, an almost tangible barrier._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A shadow flickers across her closed lids, and she sits bolt upright in a beat. Handbag spilling its contents onto the linoleum floor as her fingers fly to her mouth, _Oh!_

She can feel her lips moving against her hand. Open, shut. Open again. If she’s making audible sound then it doesn’t register. At least, not beyond the rampaging thud of blood that pounds beneath her rib-cage.

He is a mirror image, she thinks. Gaping in a way that can only mimic her own panic and disbelief. He looks older, but then, so does she. Five years is a long time after all. The dark blue scrubs are difficult to reconcile. She is equal parts proud of him and angry at herself. And both are useless emotions in this particular story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She wants to say his name. To get the letters out before he disappears like she knows he must surely be about to. But her vocal cords are not complying with her commands, and he’s taking steps backwards even as she reaches out, palms up, a surrender of sorts that she hopes will stop him in his tracks.

He says something then. _What are you doing here?_ or _Why?_ or _Why not?_ She can’t quite comprehend which it is.

And maybe it’s none of the above. Maybe it’s _Go away._ Maybe it’s _I told you not to come._

Maybe it’s _I miss you._

She blinks. Is relieved to note that she’s not crying. At least, not yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He folds at the waist then, and she’s jumping off the gurney before she has time to put the pieces together in a way that makes sense. It’s not until he hands her a fistful of documents that she remembers the contents of her bag are sprawled across the floor.

There’s a piece of paper that’s fluttered a little further from her reach than everything else. They both start towards it at the same time. She pulls back. Startled. It unfolds as he picks it up and she can see his eyes working to decode the contents.

She’s unsure how she feels about the blatant intrusion but then his mouth is moving along with the words and she’s reading along with him because she knows what it says by heart. She feels her insides shift as his lips tangle around the death sentence spelled out there.

Again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Closing her eyes then, she sinks to the floor. Knees beneath her chin and palms pressed flat against the cold tile.

She waits for him to leave. To turn and run and not look back.

She thinks she would if the situation were reversed.

Instead: “I’ll come with you.”

His voice is rough. As though he hasn’t had cause to use it in months. But it’s so achingly familiar as it echoes all the way to her toes that she thinks she might just melt right there. Almost wishes for it to be true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She’s sobbing. She can feel each and every one catch on its way out. Strangling her. She can’t do this again. With him. Without him.

_She can’t do this to him again._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Izzie. I’ll come with you. To see Swender…”

He seems to want an answer. Permission. Or maybe a refusal. To be let off the hook. She has the strength for neither. She has no idea how much time has elapsed. Can’t bring herself to care. It is an all too familiar feeling. The bone numbing fear that stops her dead in her tracks.

“What are you doing down here?” Whispered. The first words she’s managed since the phone call came. The phone call that preceded the letter that preceded the appointment with Swender.

“Lexie saw you-“

“Lexie?” She looks up at that, smiles through a salt-water haze. “Lexie’s still here?”

He kneels in front of her with a shrug. His apparent nonchalance at odds with the absurdity of the situation.

“We’re all still here, Izz.” A soft matter of fact-ness that she can’t remember hearing from him previously. “You’re the only one who left.”

She nods blindly. An up and down bob that seems difficult to stop once started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What do I do now?” Raw pleading with an implied change of topic. Because despite the fact that she wants nothing more than to keep him as far away from this as possible, it is no longer his fight after all, she honestly has no idea _what do to now_. She wants to wind back the clock eight years. Start over. Start her whole life over again. Back and back and back for there is no future here. At least, not one she can bring herself to face.

“Now, we go see Swender.”

She thinks she might still be nodding. Can’t quite tell. He reaches a hand out in her direction and she stares at it. Loses herself amid the sudden weight of what the gesture might mean. It might mean nothing.

_It might mean everything._

“And after that?” He’s still speaking. Words that are filling her insides with sawdust and hope. “Well, we can sort that part out later…”


End file.
